We've just run into some strange dealings with LG drives and Ritek -RW & +RW media. We're hoping some of the gurus up here could shed some light on this. We've dug deep on this and only found some similar situations with BIOS/chipset determing how certain media reacts in a particular drive.
GSA-4163B
Had this drive originally installed in a home-built ASUS P4C800-E Dlx/3.2GHZ, and had purchased Ritek 6x -RW media. Well, this drive wouldn't read, burn or even recognise these disks. So I brought them to my neighbor to try his Sony drive and his drive had no problems with these disks. Then we tried the Ritek 8x +RW and were happy to see that our 4163B had no problems with them.
We then upgraded the drive to a GSA-H22N. Here's what we've discovered:
H22N had no problems with the -RW media. But it would not write the +RW at 8x...only 4x would give us a readable disk.
Well, we stuck the replaced 4163B into another homebuilt system. This one was built around an Intel D815EPEA2/P3 Tualatin 1.x GHZ. Now the 4163B had no problems with the Ritek 6x -RW disks! And it still was able to burn at a full 8x with the +RW as before.
As an old "Ironworker", it's not like I haven't seen strange things with Bios and chipsets and the like. And it isn't like i haven't put together more than a few systems in my day. But I never expected to see the drives perform so differently when placed into different systems.
I could see if the drive was only able to burn at a different speed or similar when used in another system, but to go from not recognising the disk to working perfectly is a bit much. Also, I would expect the newer H22N to be able to burn the +RW at 8x in a P4 system rather than the older 4163B in a P3 system?! Firmware on the H22N is 1.01. Perhaps there is something newer out, but I was unable to find anything. Firmware in the 4163B is 1.06.
Can someone shed some light on this? Could the system make that much difference to a particular drive?
Thanks for any help or information.